County Cork in the middle of the 19th century was a very agricultural place. For the local people, life was about subsistence farming. People rented very small farms (around 1-5 acres) from mostly English landlords in a semi-feudal arrangement. The rural population was largely Catholic but had only been able to openly worship since 1829 and were still subject to oppressive restrictions. Schooling would have been difficult and it would have been unlikely that children would have received much education. It was a damp landscape and life must have been very hard.
Life was made even more difficult in 1845 with the arrival of the potato blight to Ireland. Potatoes were vital to families in rural Ireland as, in the absence of receiving salaries, this was the way that people fed themselves. In 1845 around one-third of crops were lost, a blow but manageable. The following year was much worse. In 1846 it was estimated that three-quarters of all potatoes were ruined. The population reacted in different ways. There was almost universal hunger and many of the population decided to leave the country for the UK, the Americas and Australia.